8:13 AM Dec 9, 1993
RACING AGAINST TIME
Geneva 9 Dec (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Uruguay Round negotiators were racing against time to complete their negotiations and seal the texts of the various accords in the Draft Final Act, and complete their tariff and non-tariff market access negotiations, as well as those on services before this weekend. With time running out, the GATT headquarters presents a picture these days of bedlam rather than its normal 'gentlemanly trade' negotiations. The Heads of Delegations meeting, the GATT Director-General Peter Sutherland notified Wednesday night, would be in continuous session as of Friday to clear all the texts and various agreements. But with so much to be done, and so little time left, perhaps as soon as the negotiations are wound up on 15 December, there would have to start negotiations for correcting technical errors and omissions. On Wednesday, a key group of negotiators in agriculture area, were provided the texts of the agriculture agreement (as revised by the US-EC Blair House accord and amendments to it agreed at Brussels on Monday and Tuesday). The various schedules relating to them were still not available. But at least in some areas, third parties are to pay the price over a EC decision to use its interpretation of the texts, to aggregate the current market access it has to guarantee and the minimum access where there has been no access before -- all this to be done after full tariffication. Taking advantage of some ambiguously worded provisions in an annex in the agriculture text on current access opportunities and for their expansion, the EC had filed in November 1992 (after Blair House) a tariffication offer which had aggregated various products to calculate both the tariffication levels and current access and the three percent expansion. These had never come up for discussions at the Uruguay Round. The Americans themselves had objected since some of their current access would have been lost. In the Brussels accord, the US accepted the EC's tariffication, including aggregation on current and minimum access, in return for some benefits in the form of increased access for pigmeat, turkey meat etc. But this leaves others out in the cold -- since it means that both the US and EC, visavis others, mainly developing countries, looking for current and minimum access in areas where there is now none or severely limited, having an expanded market access. By aggregating several products and their tarrified protection levels, access may be provided for one or the other, while denying for more sensitive products. At Wednesday night's agriculture committee meeting, and at the market access meeting earlier in the day, several of the developing countries voiced their concern. But the EC view, as explained on Thursday to the media, would appear to be that they had resolved this problem (with the US) through the extra pigmeat and turkey meat import concessions and there is nothing more that needed to be done, though the EC would always be willing to listen to the representations from developing countries. The biggest losers, some developing countries said, could turn out to be some within the Cairns group other than Australia whose interests the US has been seen as safeguarding in its talks with the EC. Another accord in this area, between the US and EC, that would hurt others is the one by which both have agreed that in calculating compliance with their commitments on current and minimum market access, imports under preferential arrangements would count. This means the EC, for example, could use the Lome imports on sugar etc into the accounting as to whether current and minimum access is satisfied. The US similarly could use the CBI and NAFTA imports.